Building of the Municipal Academies

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Architecture · Subcategory: Civil architecture · Year: 1953 · Authors: Secundino Zuazo

Building designed by the architect Secundino Zuazo in 1953 with the main objective of centralising the city's Municipal Academies (painting and music). Currently, the building functions, on its first floor, as the headquarters of the Real Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País de Gran Canaria. The City Council thus compensated the Sociedad Económica for the transfer of its former headquarters, located on the Alameda de Colón, which had to be demolished to open the connecting street with the current Avenida Primero de Mayo.

The Academies building stands on an old paddock, a place that Zuazo transformed with a construction of a rigorous neoclassical style, very much in line with the main works the architect carried out during his political exile in Las Palmas. The technician adhered to typically Canarian patterns, both in materials (stone and wood) and in the use of masonry walls, openings and squared arches in ashlar, balconies and wooden gutters. 

The construction clearly interacts with the urban space where it is located, relinquishing part of the plot to create a square that grants a clear interaction of its façade with the city.

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